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And All Was Right With the World

Facebook Game Gets Woman a New Kidney

by Susana Polo | 2:47 pm, November 13th, 2012


I know what you’re thinking: Farm Town cannot possibly be a real Facebook game. It’s just a thing somebody made up to make fun of Farmville. But, you’d be wrong. Not only is it a real Facebook game, it’s also the way Lisa Miller met a woman from half way across the country, found out her adult daughter needed a kidney transplant, and then connected her with a matching donor.

Gamers like to pull up examples of their communities collective good deeds, which are numerous, when mainstream media attempts to cast “video games” as the source of social ills, and it’s right that they should. Let this one stand among the annals of gaming good deeds as well, because no matter how humble the game, it still wouldn’t have happened without the ability of social gaming to bring people together.

Anyway, Lisa made a new friend through Farm Town, and, through chatting with her found out that she had a daughter (the mother of her grandson) who was very sick and looking for a kidney donor. Thus began Lisa’s three year quest to help her friend (who declined to have her family’s names released to the press). But there’s a twist in this story!

It turns out Lisa’s husband Chris was a perfect donor. After getting tested for compatibility on a whim, he gladly volunteered to donate the organ. The Millers are also organizing (this was NOT an intentional pun) a fundraiser to help with the costs of surgery and provide mom and son with their first vacation in a long time. Hooray for gaming friendships!

(via The FW.)

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